Why Don’t You Wear a Black Crepe Glove Embroidered in Gold, Like the Hand that Bore a Falcon?
You are describing how the transparent oval of my face seems to hang before you in the seconds before sleep. I peel off my gloves to eat from your paper cone of burning chestnuts even though they taste like bugs to me. You buy the chestnuts because you want me to enjoy this trip but then never to come back, not to your bedroom where I left my footprint in lotion on the hardwood, not to sit with you before your mother’s scant bowls of pastina in brodo. We pass the newsstand next to the bakery next to the bus stop by the restaurant that used to be an orphanage. You’re still talking about my phantom face, about the white light which you say surges into a beautiful tree-shape on top of my head. The clarity of this light magnetized your soul, or perhaps your soul already contained the exact spinning glob of sweetness that matched my own. It would be wrong to say precisely, it would be wrong to remember in any particular fashion. Our futures float by in their clear bulbs of breath, & I tell you the story again. 


*The title is taken from Diana Vreeland
Copyright © 2004–2023 Memorious